Hollywood film director says Ireland leading the way in addressing child sex abuse scandal

Thu 21 Jan 2016

By Hannah Tooley

A Hollywood film director has said he believes Ireland is leading the way in addressing sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

However, Tom McCarthy warned that the Church must do everything "humanly possible" to find the causes of abuse and ensure it never happens again.

He made the comments during UK premiere of Spotlight.

The film tells the story of a 2001 news investigation that exposed a child sex abuse scandal in the Church in Boston in the United States.

Speaking to the Press Association, he said the Church had "absolutely" woken up to its past abuse: "I was just in Ireland where I think they are probably ahead of everybody on this curve in terms of how they are responding, and by that I mean the citizens of Ireland responding to the Catholic Church.

"And I think there is quite a historic shift there. I think the Catholic Church has to pay attention now.

"That said they need to continue to prove that they are being as active and transparent on this issue as humanly possible to ensure that this never happens again, and there is still a way to go there."

Over the past few decades, child sex abuse scandals have been uncovered within churches all over the world, Britain, the United States and Ireland.

In 2015, a United Nations report accused the Vatican of systematically turning a blind eye to the abuse for decades, saying officials had imposed a "code of silence" on clerics and moved abusers from parish to parish in a bid to cover up their crimes.